The NHK event (Red & White Music Festival) reportedly drew a 35.7% rating in the Kanto (Tokyo) area for the first half of the program and a 42.1% rating in the second half, giving the program an overall 40% rating for the third year in a row.

Nippon TV drew a 15.4% rating in the Kanto area for their ‘Downtown’ NYE special show.

The K-1 Dynamite NYE event drew a tepid rating on Tokyo Broadcasting System. Part 1 (7-9 PM) drew an 11.8% rating, Part 2 (9-11 PM) drew a 12.9% rating, and Part 3 (11 PM-11:24 PM) drew an 8.4% rating. Tanigawa commented to the press and said that all things considered, the rating was what it was without having Masato, Kid Yamamoto, Kaoru Uno, and Jerome Le Banner. The boxing fight with Sakata on TBS drew a 9.0% rating. Hustle Mania on TV Tokyo drew a pathetic 3.4% rating (which is absolutely terrible).

41 Responses to “Kohaku reaches 40% average rating on NYE 2008”

The funny thing is that the absolutely MONSTROUS 40% for Kohaku is considered mediocre. The numbers have been down for a few years now. I take the 15.4% for K-1 is pretty decent. Not as hot as the World Grand Prix, but still respectable.

Ah, my bad. I commented before Zach put up more info. Well, its 12.9% I guess is okay. Not bad, not good, just okay.

I think these numbers (along with K-1 World Grand Prix) prove that both MMA and pro wrestling are not “cool” anymore in Japan, and its purely striking arts which is the “in” thing. I totally expect the 1/4 New Japan Tokyo Dome show to get no more than 28,000 paid fans. I am being a tad bit lenient here, saying 28,000 PAID fans. Most people really only care about Kenta Kobashi unfortunately.

I don’t think so because it’s hard to believe that Ishii and co would give up on MMA. From what the things are looking now in Japan you can tell that DREAM or whatever name FEG mma brand will have must create a new fan base because the old one isn’t that keen on mma as before. Many turned to different sports after the collapse of Pride but it is possible to revive the interest. It takes time though.

Japanese pop culture is heavily fad-driven. MMA isn’t in right now. The Japanese casual fans prefer to watch the Kameda brothers box or to a lesser extent K-1.

It amazes me how poor the taste is with the Japanese mainstream. DREAM does have a lot of competitive fighters but the Japanese don’t care about them for the most part. At least the UFC champions at least have some name value. Even Anderson Silva is a bigger name in America than DREAM’s GP champions in Japan. That’s pathetic.

“Japanese pop culture is heavily fad-driven. MMA isn’t in right now. The Japanese casual fans prefer to watch the Kameda brothers box or to a lesser extent K-1.

It amazes me how poor the taste is with the Japanese mainstream.”

Exactly. Why was “Dragon Ball Z” always so much more popular than other better (better as in many hardcore fans would say is better) anime like “Yawara”, “Yu Yu Hakusho” (to a lesser extent. Hakusho and DBZ were kind of close in popularity in the early nineties), “Berserk”, “Black Jack”,. etc.? Because casual/mainstream fans are usually sheep. “Naruto” and “Inuyasha” make me want to gag, yet they are popular. “Sailor Moon” is another example of something stupid being mainstream. All right, I have Sailor Moon DVDS, but that’s besides the point!

Oh, I didn’t even get into Tamogatchi or Hello Kitty. The point is that mainstream Japanese people don’t know what’s actually GOOD. Or, they do know what’s good, but only for a little while, before they go onto the next fad.

Yep. Japan has a very conformist culture compared to the west. And that spills into popular culture. It’s as if people in Japan follow whats popular as opposed to following what they really like in order to fit in. You see that somewhat in the west but the west is much more tolerant of individualism. Japan is a great country to visit but I certainly would not want to live there given the strong pressures to conform there. Because of the social pressures that Japanese youth face, hundreds of thousands of them shut themselves in their rooms away from society and quit school and work.

You gotta love the free-wheeling accusatory nature of the “look at Alistair Overeem grow over this five-year period” pictures. I would imagine that these people’s heads would explode if they saw a similar five-MONTH chart of Brock Lesnar when he was in college, or of Brock Lesnar when he got to WWE’s developmental system in Louisville, or of Bobby Lashley when he got to WWE’s developmental system. As with Overeem, it doesn’t necessarily prove anything, it’s just silly that of all the “before and after” photo sets that could be made of MMA fighters, someone as far down on that list as Overeem is the one who was picked.a

SR— It’s 12.9% of the Japanese population, which is a far higher percentage than any American MMA broadcast, but not the corresponding number of people due to the fact that Japan doesn’t have America’s population totals.

I think in the future we should just do away with drug testing and just let 45 Huddle determine who is using drugs and who isn’t. The fighters that he determines are on drugs can be suspended, and the clean ones won’t be suspended. It’s straight out of Dana White’s mentality of (paraphrasing) “I know what people look like when people on steroids, and Sean Sherk has never used steroids!” and it’s the wave of the future in drug enforcement in athletics.

Drug tests are good. But common sense in this case is easy to use. No different then how all these baseball players started to look huge and guess what, they were mostly all on roids. That’s not to say that all roided guys will get huge, but it is an example of pure common sense winning out.

I remember people getting bashed for claiming that Pride fighters were all juiced. And guess what, they all came to the states looking tiny.

November 17, 2007 – Alistair Overeem weighed 227 lbs for a Heavyweight fight with Paul Buentello. He didn’t have to fight at 205 lbs for about 5 months already at this point. So it is easy to say that this was his natural walk around weight at that time.

So in a little over a year the guy packs on around 25 lbs of pure muscle. That only isn’t unnatural, it is a pure sign he is on either steroids or HGH or both.

And I know Brock Lesnar will come up again, but his body doesn’t really give signs of roids…. Doesn’t mean he isn’t on something, but he isn’t showing signs. He has just a weird freakish body…. It’s just one of a kind in many ways.

It’s based on percentage of TV households, but I’m not sure how many TV households there are in Japan. That establishes the number of households that were viewing any given TV show, and then one has to factor in viewers per household to get the total viewers statistic.

The percentage of people who are watching TV at that moment who are watching a particular show is the share, not the rating. To use an example from U.S. television, Conan O’Brien’s show on Tuesday night drew a 1.6 rating (an average of 1.6 percent of TV households in America were watching it), and it drew a 6.0 share (an average 6.0 percent of households that were watching TV were watching Conan).

Am i the only one to think that noone comes in really in shape for Dynamite, especially since they are annonced 1-3 weeks before the fight that they actually might fight? Does anyone remember Overeem’s weight in the Arona fight?

“Can you believe they wouldn’t even LIKE commuter train simulators in America!?!”

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!! Ice Muncher for the win! Yes, commuter train simulator videogames are quite popular in Japan. As are videogames where you have to feel up young girls to determine if they are witches (yes, a game like this exists. I forget the name, but it was created by SNK Playmore. One of my personal favorite game companies. King Of Fighters FTW!). And it’s not like the Japanese are into beetles “fighting” each other (Mushiking)! And hey! It’s completely acceptable to get this glue-like substance to hold up your eyelids to look “western”, am I right?

I work in the TV industry and 12.9 percent refers to the number of individuals that have access to that channel. If I’m not mistaken TBS is a free to air channel, so every household with a TV should have access to that channel. However, its not defined whether 12.9% refers to individuals or a specific audience demographic.

My guess is it refers to the average number of individuals who have access to TBS (the universe). Which averaging over a 3-4 hour period is not that bad compared to US or UK ratings.

Without knowing the size of the ‘universe’ (# of people able to watch the channel) percentage ratings are meaningless.

It’s April Fool’s Day three months early with what must be a tongue-in-cheek article on the UFC’s web site about the best fights of the year. I laughed last year when they had Griffin-Bonnar II in their honorable mentions for Fight of the Year, but they’ve really out-done themselves this time! Sean Sherk vs. Tyson Griffin? Paul Kelly vs. Paul Taylor? Hardonk vs. Sanchez? Lytle vs. Taylor? Riley vs. Gurgel? The Onion has nothing on them when it comes to satire, apparently.

Also, a 12.9 rating would be among the highest-rated shows on television in the United States (depending on the week), but in Japan the standards are different in the sense that they expect much higher ratings due to the ratings that MMA has drawn in the past. Since the success or failure of a show’s ratings is ultimately based on what is expected of it by the network and the advertisers, K-1 Dynamite’s number is very disappointing for them.